Ancient's Revenge
by Miashin
Summary: Season 02 fic. From what was the digital world created? Did a similar world exist before and if it did what happened to it? Ancient evils awaken and the DigiDestined are forced to fight a being that is as old as humanity itself. The victor gets the world!
1. Prologue: Set Free

**Kiraa**: Anyone that's been 'round us for a while would have at least heard of our old digimon fic in passing. Yeah it's old, the first ever epic we plotted.  
**Keiji**: I plotted, you threw in things as you saw fit.  
**Kiraa**: Details, details. Anyway, this is it. The monstrosity, the work that started us on serious fanfiction writing, the story that gave Keiji her name...  
**Keiji**: APOCALYPSE!!  
**Kiraa**: ...and the tale that cemented my existance as Keiji's imaginary voice.  
**Keiji**: Gay imaginary voice.  
**Kiraa**: Yup, good times, good times.  
**Keiji**: Right. Moving along, this story is based at the very end of season two. The only thing that makes it Alternate Universe is the fact that the epilogue episode is disregarded. So basically, this story is set a short time after the defeat of Armageddemon and will develop from there into a different future then the one shown in the epilogue. That's about all you need to know in advance for the story.  
**Kiraa**: Yup, that's pretty much it except for pairings which will not be revealed due to plot reasons. Remember folks we love reviews, comments, and crits, they're good for the ego. So if you have the time please don't forget to drop us a line or two.

**Disclaimer**: Stari Zmaj does not own Digimon. Digimon is copyrighted to Toei, Bandai, and all the other companies and people that have stocks and ownership of the brand and merchandise. This story is purely a fanmade work and is not used to make any sort of monetary gain.

* * *

_The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents._  
Nathaniel Borenstein **(1957 - )**

**Prologue**  
_Set Free_

"Well, what do you think?"

Two men stood in a small room, at the back of the small technology museum. Between them was a glass case, ready and waiting to be carted out, taken off its wheels, and put out for display. Beneath the glass was an extremely archaic looking machine. Hundreds of switches, tubes, and rods, comprised the black mass, managing to look like a science fiction city in miniature. The thing was longer then it was wide, and on one of its short wide sides the glass panel had a handle.

The dark haired man that had spoken pulled on this handle, revealing that the glass could be opened on small hinges at this point, allowing a person access to the data entry pad of the ancient looking computer. "2000 relays, 22 bit word length, and a max 10 Hz clock frequency; she's a real beauty."

This first man was dark haired, of Asian descent, and only just starting to bald. His partner was younger, blond, and blue eyed, matched the contrived stereotype of Germans that has survived world war two even with his overly large glasses. Unlike his Asian partner, however, he didn't seem all that impressed by the machine before him.

"I don't see the big deal. The Deutsches Museum has a replica just like this one. You said you had something NEW to show me." The German's accent was extremely thick as he spoke the Japanese words slowly and carefully so as not to make a mistake in pronunciation.

"But this IS new. Well, it's old, but it's something people haven't seen for a long time." The Japanese man validated excitedly, gesturing at the machine before them. "This isn't just any old Z3 replica. It's THE Z3. Konrad Zeus' original wonder machine. The worlds first full automatic, program functioning computer. The machine that defined computers."

The elder Asian professor was obviously getting carried away by his own excitement, but the German didn't mind. He himself was quite intrigued now, and the exuberance was contagious. "But the original Z3 was destroyed during the bombing of Berlin." The youth countered, though by the tone of his voice it could easily be guessed that he was hoping for the Japanese man to prove this fact false. He wasn't disappointed.

"Not so, not so." The Japanese answered. Turning away from the machine to another table set against the nearby back wall. Rifling through the papers that were piled up there he produced a bundled of stapled papers describing the machines origins. He handed these papers to the youth, who quickly began to leaf through them, following the computers trail backwards from this small technology museum to a connoisseur of modern treasures.

"It appears that the machine was merely damaged, placed in an unlabeled box by some rushing workers, and shipped off to safe storage in Switzerland. Considering the kind of pressure Berlin was under at the time, it's no big surprise then in all the chaos it just got forgotten. The storage area that it was kept in was being cleaned out to make room for new materials when the box and its contents were found. I tell you, after that it was quite a struggle to get our hands on the machine. We had to pay many many yen to acquire it. Once it arrived here we took the liberty of repairing it."

The Japanese man took a deep breath, he'd been holding off on that particular necessity of biology during his excited story telling. "I called you here to be witness to our first successful test run."

The youth by then had finished going through the papers and now looked upon his elder with a critical eye. "Why me instead of some of your higher standing colleagues?"

A conniving glint appeared in the Japanese's eyes at the question. "Why simple. Just imagine the boost your career will gain if people heard you 'helped' in this en devour. They'll be hailing you as a new messiah when you return to Germany. And of course, you would not forget to be ever so thankful and friendly to your companions oversees who helped in this accomplishment."

At this the German smiled, the game was too easy. The museum had probably had to bargain itself to acquire an item of such value. The financial support of another major museum was not just beneficial, but more then likely necessary for this one to remain open. Besides, who was he too complain when fame was being handed to him on a silver platter? "I would never forget my dear friends in Japan." he said holding his hand out.

After the two shook hands and sealed the somewhat inappropriate deal, they both looked towards the machine in question. Suddenly the 'scheming' vibe vanished from the air. Both men were now quite excited to see the computer up and working, to people of their profession it was like meeting Adam or Eve.

A flick of power switch, and the machine came to life with a sputter. At first it looked like it was going to fail, but then the rattle turned into a hum which sounded eerily like angels singing to the two professionals that observed the machine with delight. "Now let's test if it'll still accept programming." The Japanese man said, retrieving a punch film stock from the paper cluttered table, and putting it in place on the computer.

This too proved to be a complete success, as the computer eagerly began running the film stock, and the archaic form of data, through its old system. So fascinated were the two men that they did not notice the light above them give an odd flicker.

The back room the two were in had no windows. But outside the room the sky had been dark for many hours. Although weather forecaster had predicted it to be a quite night lightning had suddenly begun to slash the dark blue canvas of the sky. The lightning seemed to leave odd after images in its wake. If anybody had been observing the even carefully they would have noted that these afterimages seemed to show a birds eye view of lakes, streams, tree, mountains, and the occasional town or city. They might have also noted that all the lightning seemed to be aiming outward from a center point, a center point that existed right above the technology museum.

Back within the small room, the first sign the two professors had of their danger was an electronic hum that did not belong to the machine who's output they were now looking over with glee. They turned around to see that the laptop that had thus far gone unnoticed on the back table, half buried under papers as it was, was now booting up. "Huh, thought I'd turned it off." The Japanese man shrugged and turned back to the older computer before him. Really, it was an old laptop acting up, nothing to be worried about there.

"Somethings wrong." The German frowned down at the archaic machine. He didn't know quite what, the computer had expanded the entirety of the film but was winding it back as it should have. In fact, the machine seemed to have eaten it, which was quite bad. If there was a blockage of some sort somewhere in the machine it would be quite difficult to get at the damaged area and repair them.

"Indeed, let's see." The Japanese put his hand in the glass case, though what he had intended to do became moot as within the next three seconds a series of events conspired to leave him without those precious limbs.

In the first second the lights in the room shut off, causing both men to stall, for another second. In second three the old Z3 machine exploded. It wasn't a lights and flame kind of explosion. Instead it was a wave of ripping pressure and heat that destroyed the Japanese's hands, threw both men against the wall of the small room, and then pincushioned them with half melted shrapnel from the glass case. Neither man was conscious by second four, thus neither saw the light bulb of the single hanging lamp in the room also explode just as it turned back on. Nor did they see that the light continued to flicker in the lamp, even though it no longer possessed a light bulb to sustain it.

Nobody was there to see the black, ember eyed shape emerge from the ruined wreck of the Z3, twitching, curling, and spasming in pain. It's red eyes fixated on the laptop that had, through some design of fate, avoided being damaged by the shrapnel, force, and heat of the explosion. Laberously the shape clawed through the air, dissapearing into the electronic appliance. The laptop beeped for a while then, as various programs were checked over. Finally the machine connected to, and uploaded a program, to the Internet before exploding itself. This time in the classic flame meaning of the term. The wooden paper strewn table easily caught flame, filling the room with thick suffocating smoke.

As if the fire had an intelligence of its own, it sent sparks flying, sparks that eventually landed on the Z3 and eagerly began to consume anything flammable that was left of the machine. The inflammable material was melted. By the time the fire alarms went off both the German and Japanese were dead from a combination of blood loss, trauma damage from the force and heat of the explosion, and suffocation due to a small room with no exits for the black smoke.

No evidence remained of what had caused the accident, except for a near non-existent digital trail that nobody knew to search for.


	2. Chapter 1: Big Brother's Watching

**Disclaimer**: Miashin does not own Digimon. Digimon is copyrighted to Toei, Bandai, and all the other companies and people that have stocks and ownership of the brand and merchandise. This story is purely a fanmade work and is not used to make any sort of monetary gain.

* * *

_I know indeed what evil I intend to do,  
but stronger than all my afterthoughts is my fury,  
fury that brings upon mortals the greatest evils._  
Euripides **(484 BC – 406 BC)** Medea, 431 B.C.

**Chapter 1**  
_**Big Brother's Watching**_

It had been weeks since the museum fire. Police and news reports eventually labeled it as an accident, caused by the testing of a badly built (re-built) machine. A tragedy, sad, but ultimately unimportant except to the family of the two men who's lives it took. Within a week it was out of headline news, by two weeks it was barely acknowledged, in three weeks all but the most closely associated people to the case had forgotten the event.

Or that's how it went for the public at least. To him the picture was much clearer. Intelligence services had descended onto the event like starving vultures. They hadn't found him, he'd been scanning and tracking all information on the subject of his awakening, and so he knew for a fact that they had no knowledge of his existence. Hate it as he might, this new digital technology was quite useful.

He had come into the world almost completely without notice, but he couldn't hide on random net servers forever. To be precise, he could do so, but refused to. After his hundred years of confinement all he wished for was revenge. THEY were still here, as immortal, or close to it, as he was. He would find them, make them suffer, and ultimately destroy them. He would take back this world which was rightfully his.

He would once again have his beloved second half beside him again.

But to accomplish all that he needed a form, a body, a host. Preferably someone from who's mind he could learn all the recent events of digital nature. Something integrally tied to this new world of his. And not just any being, it had to be a person or creature of power. Enough power to stand against all his enemies, current or future.

A stream of data blipped across his server, flicking onto it and then bouncing off again across the net. He'd seen a few of these before, but hadn't had the strength to follow the odd data eggs to their destinations. Now he did. Stirring awake, the shapeless form of dark data followed the traveling digiegg as it bounced between networks and servers, domains and hosts, homes and offices. It had a goal, he could tell, a clearly defined destination towards which it was heading. A thin string of data that flickered occasionally along the eggs path led the data forms direction.

The egg...it would eventually hatch wouldn't it? Beggars couldn't be choosy and right now any host was better then no host. Perhaps he could attach himself temporarily to this being until he was strong enough to take control of something more powerful...like a human. Not perhaps, that's exactly what he would do.

The digiegg had no defense against the black swirl of darkness that covered its sunny yellow form, turning it a deep shade of violet.

* * *

Izumi was a happy little kid as he looked upon his greatest achievement yet. Certainly he wasn't one to cheat, but it was so easy to upgrade his calculator to be more...functional. Sure it wasn't anything close to his ultimate goal, a man made digivice, but it was one heck of a start. The calculator in his hands was almost as capable as his laptop, the fact that his laptop was getting to be quite dated didn't diminish his excitement in the least.

Said laptop, as if jealous, began to give off a series of beeping alarms as various warning messages blipped onto its screen. "What now..." Izumi sighed, putting the calculator down on his work table and rolling over to his computer table with a push of his legs, chairs with wheels were wonderful for such tricks.

His annoyance lasted only as long as it took him to glance through the various messages. Each one causing him to turn paler by the second. Abandoning his chair, he practically leaped the short distance between the laptop and his cellphone. With three flicks of his thumb he had the phone speedialing. It took far too long for the person on the other side to pick up, five rings to be exact, half a ring-short of being sent to voice-mail.

"Kamiya speaking..." yawned a tired voice across the line. "Tai, something bad's moving across the net." Izumi rushed straight to the problem turning back to his laptop and initializing the necessary programs to track the disturbance that had triggered his alarm programs.

"Huh, Izzy? Do you know what time it is?" The end of the sentence was barely discernible over a long loud yawn, it was obvious that what his friend had just told him had completely flown over his sleep muddled brain. At the question Izumi spared a glance sideways at his alarm clock which happily told him it was about two-thirty in the morning. Looked like he gotten a little too preoccupied with working on his calculator.

But the time of day didn't matter, other then the fact that it sounded like Taichi was already back to snoring. How to get the other boy's attention? Well, Izumi wasn't a genius in computers alone. "Diablomon's back."

The reaction was an immediate and loud "WHAT!" that made Izumi flinch the cellphone away from his ear. He quickly brought it back, holding it in position with a shoulder as both his hands became preoccupied with the laptop's keyboard. "Well not exactly." Izumi amended his earlier statement now tat he had the other's attention.

"What's going on?" Now Taichi sounded weary, quite awake and attentive.

"I'm not sure yet. Something's moving at rapid speed over the net. It came through my web client and triggered just about every warning system I had up." A moment of silence as Izumi pulled up more detailed information on the culprit. "It's a digiegg." he stated, and both boys felt a sinking sense of dei ja vu. A digiegg was how the whole Diablomon fiasco started.

"I don't think its actually Diablomon, the data structure is far too different." Izumi continued on. "But its signature level is that of a Mega digimon even though it's just an egg, it triggered all the alarms I set up just in case Diablomon or Myotismon ever returned, and finally it seems to be carrying some kind of virus." Another pause as Izumi uttered a vulgar oath.

"What, what happened?" Taichi was by now on the proverbial edge of the chair, Izumi did not have a habit of foul language.

"It's fast too. I tried to block off its progress, lock it up until we could get around to it. But it just bounced around the cage. It seems to be heading somewhere."

There was shuffling over on the other side of the phone. "What can we do then?" Izumi was about to answer when his tracking programs suddenly lost the digiegg. He looked back at the clock, two-forty was not a good time to be out and about. "Nothing now. It's not on the Internet anymore, must have bio-emerged somewhere."

"Can you find out where?"

"Yeah, I can. But it'll take time. It was moving too quickly either way, the best I could give you would be a general location. And even that'll probably take me the rest of the night to find out."

"...So you woke me up for nothing?"

"TAI!"

"I know, I know. Important world threatening business and all that. But you just said there's nothing for us to do, and now... You KNOW I won't be able to go back to sleep. Not with this lurking over my head." Now Taichi just sounded exasperated, another series of shuffles from his line was probably the other boy lying back down.

"That makes two of us. Look I'm sorry, I thought that I could catch it, and then you and Agumon could go give it a closer look, you two are on duty this week."

"Nuh uh. As of twelve o' clock this morning, night, whatever, it was Joe's turn."

Izumi sighed, there was no winning this argument. "Right, sorry 'bout that then. I'll call you back when I get more info."

"You better." Taichi muttered, "Hear ya later then."

"Bye." And with that final word, Izumi listened to the line be cut. Letting the cellphone slide off his shoulder int a waiting hand he closed it with a sigh. It was going to be a long, annoying, night.

By the time the sun was peeking through the window he had made little progress. Whatever had bio-emerged couldn't possibly have been just a digiegg. The thing had gone back and erased its trail, probably guessing the pursuit after Izumi's failed trap. His eyes, neck, and shoulders ached from being hunched over a glowing screen all night long and he had nothing to show for the effort.

Diablomon had been frightening simply because he was so powerful. Whatever this being was could at the very least match that monster of a digimon in power but it opparated completely differently. Where Diablomon, on both occasions of his appearance, had been blunt to the point that everybody with a digital screen had noticed his coming and going, this being was being extremely careful to hide itself. If Izumi hadn't hacked into his network provider and placed those alarm systems he himself would never have known that this creature had ever appeared.

It was a sobering thought. Power alone was daunting, power and cunning together was downright terrifying.

* * *

Daisuke was awoken by shrieking. Though for a change it didn't belong to his alarm clock. Half awake he mumbled something along the lines of "Too noisy." before rolling over and curling up under the blankets, making sure that quite a decent amount of the fabric was covering his ears. There was no escape from the disturbance though as Jun rushed into his room happily singing.

"I've got a digimon, I've got a digimon, I've got a digimon..." she shoved the sleeping form on the bed roughly, since obviously she wasn't being given the attention due to such a glorious event.

"Don't you know you should knock." Daisuke muttered darkly while trying to curl deeper into his blankets. Annoyed at the reaction, Jun grabbed a fistful of the covers and ripped them off her brother. Daisuke gave a yelp of protest as cozy warmth was suddenly replaced by very uncozy cold. "Don't do that!" He turned on his sibling, now quite awake and angry. "What if I slept in the nude!"

"Eww..." Jun wrinkled her nose in disgust, for a moment thrown off her cheer by the unpleasant imagery. Too soon though, she was back in chipper mood, thrusting an object right into Daisuke's scowling face. "Nevermind that. Look, look. I got a digimon."

Daisuke had to go cross-eyed for a second to see just what Jun had almost squished his nose with. "Uh, June. That's a digivice not a digimon." Indeed, once he'd leaned back far enough from the object to see it clearly it did reveal itself to be a digivice, much like the ones Tai and the other first generation kids possessed.

"Duh. I know that. But having this means that I've got a digimon somewhere." Jun gasped in excitement, suddenly clapping her hands together and dashing out of the room. "It's probably by the computer!" she cried happily to nobody in particular.

With a groan, Daisuke fell back against his pillow. He might seriously have gone back to sleep, even without the blanket, if his alarm hadn't decided to add its own voice to the growing cacaphony of the house hold. Slapping a hand down on the annoying machine, he spent a total of three whole minutes glaring at any and all school related objects in his room, before a call from his mother had him finally crawling out of bed.

It wasn't until after he'd brushed his teeth, put on his uniform (new school standards), and started packing his bag for school that the enormity of the situation hit him. Realization dawned on Daisuke as soon as he collected his D-3 and D-Terminal, his sister had a digimon. His sister was a digidestined. Three seconds later found Daisuke leaning over the kitchen table, and Jun's breakfast. "You've got a digimon?"

Jun leveled a pouting glare at him. "No" she said, and attacked her rice as if it was the source of all her problems.

"But you said-"

"I couldn't find it." she cut him off viciously.

"Oh..." Daisuke leaned back, not knowing really what to do now. On the one hand he felt bad for her, she'd obviously been quiet happy at the idea that she might have a digimon just like Chibimon. On the other hand he was relieved that she wouldn't be getting involved with the digital world, He didn't want to think about whether his relief stemmed from concern or a sense of jealousy if she had gotten a digimon.

Their father obviously heard at least the last part of the conversation as he sat himself down at the table. "Good. Don't need any more trouble around here." he stated matter of factly as their mother placed a bowl of rice before him and Daisuke after the boy had seated himself. That comment effectively sealed the digimon subject at the table, though the mood remained tense and uncomfortable throughout the rest of the breakfast.

"Bah, stupid!" Jun declared as soon as both children were out the door of the apartment and heading for the elevator. "He doesn't get it. Can you believe it, a digimon for me." She sighed, going to a calmer version of her excited joy of the morning. "I just wonder where it is."

Daisuke didn't like it, the idea of his sister as digidestined. And ultimately he didn't care whether it was because of worry or jealousy, to him it was just plain bad. "Maybe dad's right, ya know. Maybe it's a good thing it isn't here." Both children stopped before the sliding elevator doors.

As they waited for the machine to come up to their floor, they both turned to look over the railing of apartments walkway down into the street. They both knew that part of the patrol routine involved their street at about the same time each day they headed for school. Watching the tank, a machine more suited for war zones then peaceful city streets even if it was using turn signals, entering and rolling down the street was an odd sight.

The military, either in the form of tanks, new school policies, ID checks, and other such 'small' changes had become a fixed presence in the city ever since the second Diablomon incident. Jun had to agree just slightly, that perhaps this was a bad time to be related to digimon at all.

* * *

Published: June 29, 2007 


End file.
